#hope county gothic 2018

[impossible-ancient]

~Colleagues~

When Sharky runs into John on his morning jog, just outside of his house.  This was before he started going crazy with Eden’s Gate.  You know Sharky didn’t go to Harvard, so let’s not even kid ourselves. ;-)  I actually forgot to change the scale, but thank goodness they actually are the same height, so nevermind. :-)

[woundedheartwithin]

Studying Hope County

Jacob Seed (1 / ?)

Find my screenshots here!

[safewithinedensgate]

Montana At Night // Nautre 

[radiojamming]

You know Christ had twelve apostles And three he led away He said, "Watch with me one hour, 'Till I go yonder and pray." 

Tell me who's that writin'? John the Revelator Tell me who's that writin'? John the Revelator Tell me who's that writin'? John the Revelator Wrote the book of the seven seals

John the Revelator - Traditional American gospel song Hope County Gothic - Week 1: Eden’s Gate

PLAYLIST || MOODBOARD PERMALINK 

Joseph Seed hears them everywhere. He hears them when the wind picks up, when it moans in mourning against the aged clapboard of the little church that clings to the edges of a wheat field. And he hears them in the whistle of the wheat itself, when it bends and wavers in every spare breeze, when it shivers like the chill of autumn burrows down to its hollow marrow. He hears them when the pages of his Bible turn on their own accord, the quiver of thin rice paper flipping through the Old Testament and into the New; always, always trying to make Joseph look at the black verses and the red. Lord, he hears them even when the world goes quiet, when the wind arrests and settles like a bird on the windowsill. They speak. They cry. They plead with him and press their fingers against his temples, claws sinking into the soft flesh, the thin bone, down deeper and deeper into the delicate gray matter with all its firing and misfiring synapses, until he hears them even when they’re not there. When he turns his head to find their source, he finds empty pews, dark corners gathering dust and cobwebs. 

He can’t ignore them, his invisible congregation. It’s hard when some of them sound like people he’s known. He can hear the men who beat him all those years ago, and he can hear the foster mothers and fathers, and the mother and father he did know for such a short time. But he also hears his brothers, and his wife— No. No, he can’t ignore them. He can’t run from them, either. God knows he’s tried. He’s let them chase him from one little Georgia town to another, up and down the highways and freeways, over countless state lines. He thought he might lose them for a little while, here up in the mountains, where the air is colder and clearer. He thought just maybe he would hear the Voice here, far away from the dark murmuring of them. But the Voice stays silent, and still they reach for him, gathering him up in their cold, dead arms while they whisper into his ears, into the hollows of his skull, their tones vibrating through his cartilage. Collapse. Collapse. Collapse. Sometimes it seems like that’s the only word they know. They echo the last word of the Voice until its all caught up in a chamber of reverberation, shuddering from one temporal lobe to the other, rattling down through his jaw until the word hangs heavy in his mouth. Preach, they order, when they find another word to whisper. Preach. Collapse. He wishes he could bargain with them, but not once have they been merciful. He’s tried to make his case before, when they pressed harsh lights against his eyes, made his stomach churn with raw agony, caused him to claw at his bedsheets, to scream into the night until he couldn’t take it anymore. He’s tried to tell them that people won’t listen, that no one wants to hear about the Collapse. People will be afraid. And he doubts— Oh God, does he doubt. But they were harsher then, punishing him for his denial. Peter denied! they accuse. They crow it three times, screaming it into his head. They howl, they snarl, they tell him that he is a doubter, that he is weak, that the Voice gave him a task, a purpose, and how dare he avoid fulfilling it! He doesn’t try to bargain with them again. They quiet down, but only just. And still, always, they follow him.

[prophesyr]

WEEK ONE: CREATION, OCTOBER 1ST   /   in the beginning, before our movement found its footing, its name—there was the voice. and in the voice was the reason, hope, and birth of what we now call the project at eden’s gate.       word count: 2,862      trigger warnings: child abuse, child death, death, and violence.

          HE HEARD IT FIRST AS A DISTANT RUMBLE, gradual and rolling with the coming storm. The lightning, his father held in his fists, in his words, in the assured raise of his Bible. It came in flashes—something like hope between them. Maybe that was the last. Maybe this next one, the next. He lost count, young Joseph Seed, somewhere between the eastern bluebirds’ exultation and the disquieting tinker of Mother’s wind chimes.           Did they ever stop?           ‘   Look at me,   ‘     his father spit, buried within an accent as murky as it was thick, and Joseph did as he was told.     ‘   You see this? Don’t you stand there with y’mouth open. Answer me. What’s this look like to you?   ‘           To the best of his ability, he blurted,     ‘   It’s a comic book… s-sir.   ’     He meant to sound louder, more sure of himself. With a little more conviction, maybe this time wouldn’t be so bad. Too late, he learned how to grasp that certainty in the shaky cluch of his seven-year-old fist. An ill-controlled sob punctuated his words just a few seconds later. No longer could he give the ILLUSION of strength. Now, as he would be told time and time again, he was only crying to be heard.           A laugh rumbled through Old Mad Seed, now towering above his son, both in stature and subsistence. Only now could Joseph understand the weight his mistake. That lesson was given with the sting of a silver ring to the boy’s left cheek.     ‘   This,   ’     his father hissed before landing the next blow and the next,     ‘   is the DEVIL’S CORRUPTION. And I’ll be damned if I’d let my own flesh and blood succumb to this—garbage.   ‘           From his pocket, the old man produced the same lighter he used on his cigarettes, the ones that smelled like burnt beans and dust. It flickered once, twice, and the third spark caught Spider-Man’s leg in a slow, meticulous blaze. Had it not been for the pounding below his temple, a stream of tears might have loosed from his son’s eyes. It wasn’t even Joseph’s, but a boy one whole grade above himself who had taken pity. Now, Joseph would never be trusted. It didn’t bother him, somehow ; it only served to deepen the hollow chill within his chest, his own soul as glazed as his eyes.                     ‘   Do you know where you are?   ’           The Voice came in silence. It did not confine itself to a plane of true existence. It did not carry the calming rumble of a storm or the unnerving buzz of a mosquito. He could feel it behind his eyes and in the clench of his teeth. It raised tension in his shoulders, forming a stone-stiff ACHING in his fingertips. Spoken in the lap of the flame, it exhaled life into the fire in Old Mad Seed’s hand and echoed with the thump of paper as the book dropped to what little pavement preceded the Seeds’ porch. In unplaceable tongues, both dead and new, it whispered beneath the scent of the coming autumn, despite the clear July afternoon. On its breath, it carried the  p r o m i s e  of destruction and hope. Buried in the stomp and drag of his father’s boot against the pavement, it led him through the paradise of tomorrow.                     Again it asked,     ‘   Do you understand?   ’          And he did.           HOW JOSEPH WISHED HE COULD BEAR the strength of his brother. Jacob felt pain as any other ; he wore it as a badge of honor. Every bruise was another story, every cracked tooth and scar was a testament to his own  b r a v e r y . So often, the eldest Seed had faced down the beast. He held out his chest and took more than his own beatings in the name of playing the protector. And what had Joseph done, if not allow it? Three years from knowing this earth for a full decade, and already he understood the weight of that GUILT.           A belt, a switch, a hand raised to Joseph, and Jacob stood his ground between them. It became a daily routine between them. Repetitious, monotonous, almost boring toward the end—but then, one day, Old Mad Seed turned his rage to John.           This cause was no better than any other. Mail sat  s t r e w n  from the front door to the couch, some pieces torn and discarded while John sat among the rest. And rather than hone in on the ghost which wore the face of their mother, the woman who tossed the post to the wayside and in easy reach of a TODDLER, the old man yanked John from the sitting room floor by his arm. The youngest Seed’s screams were loud enough to bring his brothers sprinting inside.           Before then, John never cried.           Decades from now, Joseph would remember in heartrending clarity the layout of the living room. He would recall the unique pattern of each wood panel, the HOSTILE orange of the shag carpet, the suffocating placement of the couch. Their mother, just as she would with her other children, would not come to John’s rescue. And their father, may he rot in hell, taught John what was meant by ‘righteous fury.’ In the deepest recesses of Joseph’s mind, Jacob’s anger would brand itself. No more could he ask, what happens when he resents us the way he does our father? But until the day life or death separated them permanently, Jacob would always bare his teeth in the name of his brothers’ safety.                     ‘   Do you know your purpose?   ’     it asked in the crack of John’s whimpers. The second time he heard the Voice, it screamed,     ‘   Stop,   ’     until it was hoarse.           THE THIRD, HE CHASED FROM HIS MIND SO LONG AGO, so desperately that it still would haunt even his waking dreams years later. It came in the subtle hum of fluorescent lights and a pounding in the forefront of his head, so tireless, he could swear his eyes would burst. A hand raised to shield them in confusion, mild at first, and then jolted into a panic which would not leave for three days.           With a kindness he could not grasp, Joseph was settled back into his cot by a fresh-faced nurse. She did not deserve the fear on his tongue. And the responsibility of telling him the fate of his wife was a burden none should have bore. The truth deafened his ears, but the Voice found a way. He found it in the sympathetic contortion of her face, marked between the eyes with a CROSS unlike what he had ever seen. In written word, wherever his eyes may rest, he found its hints laid out for all to see. On bulletins, dry erase boards, his own health reports, it always found a way.                     ‘   Just as the Lord has granted you the day,   ’     it  h i s s e d  behind the well wishes of his nurse,     ‘   so too shall you revel in His night.   ’           Only when he felt calm enough to accept a glass of water was a doctor willing to speak with him.     ‘   She survived ;  your daughter will live,   ‘     was the false hope he first instilled in a grieving father, and for a moment, Joseph believed it. But as he watched over that incubator, it became CLEAR what he meant—your daughter could live, and she would, if she had someone better than you. All it would cost was the low price of everything he did not own, alongside his wife’s funeral expenses, potential court dates for the accident, and his own hospital bills.           Static was in everything. Strangers’ condolences, the rustling of the wind outside, her weak cries… It was in his own skin, settled for three days with the taste of iron on his tongue. And all the while, the Voice remained, hushed albeit RELENTLESS.           His own legs were naught but stitching and bandages. Never had they seen such a miracle, they said, that he had broken nothing, let alone lived to bear witness to the true power of the Voice. In the form of a man far too old and frail to still hold his right mind, as Joseph idly watched the world outside joyously  c o n t i n u e  from the common room window, it collapsed at the side of his wheelchair. Hands coated in age spots found one of his and held it with an iron grip.                     ‘   You cannot ignore your purpose,   ’     it confided in him.     ‘   Don’t suffer beneath the anchor of your conscience ;  don’t prolong the inevitable. SHE IS GOING TO DIE.   ’           ‘   Let me go,   ’     he commanded through tears and the tremor in his captive hand.     ‘   Please.   ’           But it wouldn’t. It clamped tighter, and the old man’s eyes began its  r e q u i s i t i o n  in the voices of a thousand nations,     ‘   Let her go,   ’   one hand released his, and the elder grasped Joseph by the back of his neck, forcing the touch of their foreheads in desperation.     ‘   Pray with me, Father. Your children need you.   ’           At that moment, a nurse rushed over and pulled the man to his feet. The urgency in his eyes was long gone, as was the inhuman strength in his hands. No longer did he know where he was or to whom he was speaking. Dementia, the woman told him,     ‘   No need to worry. Alvin hasn’t spoken a full sentence in years.   ’     And they left Joseph there to piece together the last truth he wanted to hear—that come that night, he would have nothing. No home, no wife, and no daughter.           THE BLOWS KEPT COMING, KNUCKLES BLOODIED as they dug again and again into his stomach, his shoulders, his face. By now, three ribs and his left collarbone must have been cracked, if not broken. He can’t feel it ;  if he tried, Joseph may feel nothing else but that blinding pain for the rest of his short life. How he longed for tonight to mark the end of it. Would it be so tragic to find a nobody like him curled in on himself in a dark alley?           It happened every day to men more innocent.           ‘   My turn,   ’     one laughed into the night. In Joseph’s eyes, his assailants bore a glow of dim white, and his mind screamed—at last, it’s time. The men traded their hold, and the one calling the shots drove his first punch.           Something cracked. His jaw, he thought, and only with the cool line of crimson down his cheek did he feel the zygomatic fracture beneath his left eye. If pain were no more than a sound, a piercing scream would have SPLIT the ears of all of Atlanta. It pulled tears from him, uncontrolled as the wind, though the sobs that threatened to break past his throat lay on the wind as nothing more than a sigh. He would have fought, had he the strength or reason. When they would find him, no one would ask if he fought back. No one will know the clench of his fists or the pleas just to leave him be. No one would care who Joseph Seed was. The man was a  g h o s t  in life, and he would be no more remarkable in death.           He should have thought—No. He should have known. Whether it were to happen now or in fifty years, when all he had to look back upon were countless nights of pointless, overzealous longing, spawned by a DELUSION in childhood, he was always destined for an end such as this. Pathetic, empty… alone. A bitter smile pulled at only his mouth, leaving the loss in his eyes untouched to through the glassy sheen of his own personal grievance.           If ever there was a God, He was not on Joseph’s side.           With the ache of rejection once again in his throat, Joseph all but called to the heavens, the Voice, his creator, what every man at rock bottom secretly wonders night after night, Why did I ever trust you?           Mother Earth answered in kind. She cried back to him, her voice deafening against the weakened heartbeat of the city. It was in the reddened sky and the quake beneath his feet ;  she mourned over humanity, as she had for decades now, perhaps centuries. She lost it in mankind’s battles—both great and personal—in the hate in which they vomited their unsolicited opinions and the guns taking countless lives upon her skin. Cease, she begged, yet they continued to beat each other and themselves mercilessly, as violence is the only language all humans could speak. She revolted for and craved a simpler time, and in that longing, her skies adhered to an inky black, and Death’s Voice held fast to its dominion.                     ‘   —Do you know where you are, my son?   ’           ‘   I’m here,   ’     he found himself reciting like an old verse from his father’s Good Book. The same book which left welts on his back and shoulders. The same book he still feared. The air in his lungs was no longer frozen in vigilance, his sight no longer obscured by his own hubris. He stood in an open field,  e m p t y  in every right. In the distance, the sun readied itself for the coming night, casting the world around him in an auburn surrealism.     ‘   i’m home.   ’           As far as the eye could see, fields of foreign flora blossomed in silent worship, and it felt like instinct—white trumpets, all faced to the stars above, which now rejoiced in their distant fervor. Each sun held its own set of worlds with their own versions of the same painfully human race.           An unseen hand rested upon his shoulder, and Joseph’s worries eased blissfully into the flowers. At long last, his oldest friend had returned with greater news than any channel would air.     ‘   You are his will, his chosen,   ‘     it said, and he felt himself filled to the brim with its words. His eyes stayed cast to the vast galaxy beyond his earth, fixed to the countless possibilities of yesterday, today, tomorrow. One by one, the stars expanded in a fiery splendor, spectacular and haunting as a lonesome display of FIREWORKS. In grandiose succession, the worlds before him burst and fell to the ground surrounding, tiny and insignificant as a dying campfire.           It only took one. A single flame settled into the open mouth of a trumpet, and it sparked a wildfire hotter than Old Mad Seed ever described as Hell. The Earth groaned again, breaking into a scream as her surface split open to devour the landscape. The ground shifted and rose, the rest falling beneath an illimitable sea. With each flower burned or swallowed or drowned, another face distorted itself it its place.           This place was naught but decay. The world was created to die.           —   on the horizon, though, lay a hope.                    ‘   You shall lead those that wish to become a part of something greater than this world is now. You will walk through hellfire and be BORNE ANEW. Through the pain and suffering you will ascend, you will be loathed, you will be adored. You will evolve beyond all of it.   ’           His breath shuddered. Questions  s w a r m e d  his mind, but he hadn’t that kind of time.     ‘   I understand.   ’   And he did. To create, one must destroy. To thrive, one must be pruned. To survive, one must purge. This was not his purpose ;  he was chosen to save those who could build that better world, those who could sit with Mother Earth and help her exhale a new future, one without society and civilization. One where humanity could once again flourish.                     ‘   Everything you have loved will be SACRIFICED!   ’     the Voice warned, and it still felt more welcoming than anything he had known.     ‘   Everything you have ever cared for will die.   ’           Everything he cared for would turn to dust. Already, it lay in ash across the Atlanta skyline. No more would he know a love so human, though the soaring in his chest brought the offering of something deeper, something more prevailing than a warm body at his side. Again, tears stung his eyes. A captivated smile left his mouth agape, his brows twisted in unadulterated awe. This was the end of the world, and he had never been so ready for it as this very moment. May this failed world order fall DESTITUTE to its knees in the face of its creators, its destructors, and its countless gods.          ‘   Take it. Take all that I am. Shape me into your own—I’m yours.   ’           The world fell flat again, buildings jutting around him in the same haggard placement they had before. His eye was swollen shut now, and copper coated his tongue. The men were shouting once more, laughing, and then… an eerie silence. Their leader said something distant. Their grip loosened. Joseph dropped to the ground, and he pieced it together.     This guy’s fucked up.     His hand raised to his own grin as they left. His fingertips came back  t r e m b l i n g  and bloody.           And in his mind echoed a noise like thunder, the Voice’s final words,                     ‘   Joseph, it is time.   ’

[unclefungusthegoat]

EXODUS FROM EDEN

A Far Cry 5 AU: The Plagues of Egypt

Hope County Gothic 2018- WEEK 1- PROJECT AT EDEN’S GATE

Word count: 1327

WARNING: Blood, dead animals, frogs, insects, rotting food, sickness/disease, starvation, scars and wounds, self-flagellation, child death, major character death, child abuse references, self harm

A Pharaoh once sat on high, his towering empire built by the hands of enslaved Israelites. But he defied the commandments of God, and his hubris was punished with pestilence, famine and death, wrought upon his lands through God’s messenger- a man he once called his brother.

Joseph Seed sits on high, his Project, his Eden inhabited by the unwilling, the unrepentant. And now God sends another messenger, one who trusts in and upholds the law, to warn the false prophet-

Let my people go.

Joseph Seed seeks to build a garden. An Eden where God’s chosen will be saved from the fury of an impending, catastrophic reckoning. With those he loves at his side- his brothers, Jacob and John, his sister Faith, his wife and infant daughter- he fabricated a devout and holy empire, claiming the people of Hope County for indoctrination into his ‘family’. He believes he is saving them. He believes he hears the voice of God.

He is mistaken, misguided by demons.

In a small town on the border of Joseph’s empire, a young police Deputy wanders through the lush Montana landscape, seeking solace and serenity. They had once been a part of Joseph’s family, enticed by his soothing words, his condemnations of government and society, his genuine care for the world’s ‘unfortunates’. But they had seen his true face. His lust for power. His hungry gaze. His serpent tongue.

They had fled.

And it is in that liminal forest that they hear the true voice of God, whispered first through low hanging branches, slipping gently through evergreen leaves, before alighting a bush and illuminating the glade with an opalescent flame.

God’s message is clear.

The people of Hope County must be freed from the clutches of the false prophet. 

Under a star-ridden sky, silent in the early hours of the morning, the Deputy meets Joseph in his church and explains to the Father of God’s commandment.

Unwavering in his faith, Joseph simply replies:

‘God will not let you take them.’

The Deputy pleads, but to no avail. And so they deliver the first warning:

...I will strike the water...

The Henbane River, once blue and speckled with the green haze of Bliss, grows thick and stains slowly with crimson. John is holding a sinner below the surface of the water, seemingly cleansing him, but instead he watches in horror as his hands redden and the scent of bitter metal claws its way down his throat. The sinner in his firm grasp begins to thrash and, as John brings him back into the cool night air, he looks upon a man glossed with so thick a sheen of blood, that he wonders how he is not drowning.

...I will plague your whole country with frogs...

Soon, Faith collects flowers by the tainted river. The soles of her bare feet are slick with the blood that has begun to soak into the soil. It is not long until the wild lobelias she gathers are scattered along the grassy path where she fled, as frogs are spat from the river’s depths in their thousands.

...Smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice...

The prisoners in Jacob’s care, their clothes stained with the rotting juice from meat they devoured, are used to the bristle of the Judges’ fur and the itching of lice. But upon the Father’s third denial of freedom, they see their captors begin to scratch the skin from their scalps, bloody flesh under their fingernails, their bodies overrun with the gnawing of a hundred thousand tiny mouths.

...Pharaoh hardened his heart...

Upon the release of a swarm of flies, which in turn brought disease as they settled on the harvest, chewing their way into the stocks hidden deep within the bunkers, Joseph’s voice fills the Deputy’s radio frequency. His words are faint from the unceasing cacophony of wings. He asks that the Deputy cease the plagues. He promises freedom for the people of Hope County.

The land was cleansed of the infestation.

But still, the people were not free.

...the LORD will bring a terrible plague upon the livestock in the field...

The bulls in Holland Valley collapse in the untended grass, their ribs prominent as they starve where they lie. Ravenous cougars rip all but the prongs from the elk corpses on the hot tarmac road through the Whitetail Mountains. The meat is poisoned by sickness. It is not long before the wild cats also succumb.

... festering boils will break out on men...

Joseph dabs soothing ointment upon the sores on John’s back, where they nestle among his deep scars. They grow inflamed and fever racks his body, droplets beading across his brow as though he was newly baptised. He bandages Jacob’s arms, where the patchwork of vermilion welts have given way to a new shroud of bulging sores. The Father is kept awake through the humid night by the screams of his infant daughter, boils burning into her tiny face.

...The LORD sent thunder and hail...

The Angels in the fields were nothing more than dust now. Each was incinerated by a lightning strike that evaporated their milky eyes, before claiming their bodies entirely. The church in Fall’s End no longer had a steeple, the hail having shattered it down. The people of Hope County had heard it crumble. The bell had tolled endlessly as ice rained upon it, and had then fallen silent. The thunder had rocked the earth and reduced the mighty statue of the Father to rubble.

...they will devour what little you have left...

There are no longer pumpkins at Rae-Rae’s farm. No longer are the fields blotted with fleshy fruits, but instead, dark with locusts that even devour the metal fencing, the wood of an old dog house, the tarp that covers a rusted truck. Radio towers appear like pillars of black salt, writhing in the fading sunlight. Joseph hides with his family, still ignoring the Deputy’s pleas.

...darkness that can be felt...

Madness came with three days of darkness. The Seed family kneel before the altar, whipping the flesh from their backs, unable to comprehend why God would allow this false prophet to punish them, his chosen, when they have all suffered so much already. Many of their flock walk out of the compound, never to be seen again. The shadow is suffocating, the silence oppressive. Joseph knows no light can be found in sleep- they are all haunted with nightmares.

...loud wailing... worse than there has ever been or ever will be again...

Joseph doesn’t cry when his baby daughter suddenly pales in his arms, her skin and lips fading to a periwinkle blue, cold to the touch. He does not respond to his wife’s heavy sobbing as she clings to the swaddled child. He holds her hand, gently winding his rosary around her palm. He doesn’t cry when he hears John screaming at the hunched figure of his eldest brother, blistered hands gripping at Jacob’s well worn camo jacket and oddly peaceful face, in desperate hope that he might wake. He barely hears the wailing that rings through the compound, through the valley and the mountains. God’s chosen few, chosen no more.

Instead, he radios the Deputy. He speaks in a quiet voice. It is a voice that lingers in the hollow space somewhere between forlorn resignation and tempestuous rage.

And the people of Hope County are at last freed. Purged of Bliss, their scars and swollen tattoos bandaged, the Deputy walks with them through the gates, as the sun rises once more.

Joseph watches them go. 

He sits alone in the ruins of his garden. His Eden. He waits for guidance, an echo of the Voice that had let him climb so high and then allowed his world to be torn apart around him.

He is met with silence.

It is the same aching silence he had known as a boy in the moments after his Father had finished beating him. Perhaps he was still there now, in that moment, resting on a porch in the heat of a Georgia summer. Perhaps he would indeed see the Red Sea part, in the form of a gash in his back where leather met skin.

Perhaps this was not his promised land.

And taking a knife in his malnourished fingers, he cuts into his tall forehead, a permanent reminder to his forsaken soul:

Exodus 7:17

“By this you will know that I am the Lord”.

-----------------------------------

Bold quotations are from the Book of Exodus. Painting is The Great Day of His Wrath, by John Martin.

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed! This is my first fanfic for this fandom- I haven’t actually written fanfiction for a few years, (at least, not written down, I write it in my head all the time hahaha) and I’ve been concentrating on my meta essays for FC5, so I apologise if I was a bit rusty!

Also, disclaimer: I’ve never actually read the Bible, and obviously this is a fictional interpretation, so there are almost definitely some inaccuracies, but I tried to research as best I could! I wasn’t sure whether the death of the first born applied to daughters as well as sons, or to adults who were firstborn, but I used both for the sake of story.

Finally, I unashamedly acknowledge that I was 100% inspired by the Prince of Egypt.

[nadjadoll]

                                                              Montana At Night

[tenaflyviper]

@primaryconclusion

We'll actually need to do some differentiating here, as films classified as "Southern Gothic" by itself are not horror. Most tend to be serious dramas with thriller elements. They are also entirely separate from "Gothic Horror" (which we won't be covering here, as the focus is on the southern aspect). For the sake of completion, I'll list a few southern gothic films, regardless of being horror or not. NOTE: Tubi TV requires signing up, but is still totally free, and available on all portable devices (though not all links are for Tubi TV).

Southern Gothic:

Swamp Water (1941)

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

Written on the Wind (1956)

Suddenly Last Summer (1959)

The Fugitive Kind (1960)

The Young One (1960)

Sweet Bird of Youth (1962)

Cape Fear (1962)

The Intruder (1962)

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Toys in the Attic (1963)

Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)

Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967)

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968)

The Beguiled (1971)

Macon County Line (1974)

Wise Blood (1979)

Southern Comfort (1981)

Sister, Sister (1987)

The Apostle (1997)

Undertow (2004)

Shotgun Stories (2007)

Winter’s Bone (2010)

Killer Joe (2011)

Child of God (2013)

Stoker (2013)

Southern Gothic Horror:

Night of the Hunter (1955)

Deliverance (1972)

Return to Boggy Creek (1977)

The Beyond (1981)

Madhouse (1981)

Cat People (1982)

American Gothic (1987)

Angel Heart (1987)

The Reflecting Skin (1990)

Cape Fear (1991)

Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh (1995)

Interview with the Vampire (1994)

Beloved (1998)

The Gift (2000)

Frailty (2001)

House of Wax (2005)

The Skeleton Key (2005)

Venom (2005)

Southern Gothic (2007)

The Bleeding House (2011)

Jug Face (2013)

The Perfect Host: A Southern Gothic Tale (2018)

Matriarch (2018)

Get Gone (2019)

Villains (2019)

Antebellum (2020)

Honeydew (2020)

Southern Horror:

Two Thousand Maniacs (1964)

Blood Freak (1972)

Frogs (1972)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Satan's Children (1975)

Squirm (1976)

The Town that Dreaded Sundown (1976)

Eaten Alive (1976)

The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

Motel Hell (1980)

Mother's Day (1980)

Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981) (alternate link)

Just Before Dawn (1981)

Madman (1981)

Children of the Corn (1984)

Critters (1986)

Ozone! Attack of the Redneck Mutants (1986)

House II: The Second Story (1987)

Redneck Zombies (1987)

Splatter Farm (1987)

Ghost Town (1988)

Pumpkinhead (1988)

Blood Salvage (1990)

Skeeter (1993)

From Dusk 'Till Dawn (1996)

House of 1,000 Corpses (2003)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

Dead & Breakfast (2004)

Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill (2004)

The Devil's Rejects (2005)

2001 Maniacs (2005)

Hatchet (2006)

Backwoods (2008)

Trailer Park of Terror (2008)

Hatchet II (2010)

Savage County (2010)

Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010)

2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams (2010)

Inbred (2011)

Hatchet III (2013)

Rockabilly Zombie Weekend (2013) (alternative link)

Bubba the Redneck Werewolf (2014)

Hillbilly Horror Show (2014)

Jessabelle (2014)

Lasso (2017)

Attack of the Southern Fried Zombies (2018)

Dead Don't Die in Dallas (2019)

Gothic Harvest (2019)

Horror Western:

Near Dark (1987)

Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1989)

Grim Prairie Tales (1990)

Ravenous (1999)

Dead Birds (2004)

The Quick and the Undead (2006)

The Burrowers (2008)

A Vampire's Tale (2008)

Gallowwalkers (2012)

Blood Moon (2014)

Bone Tomahawk (2015)

West of Hell (2018)

Someone in a reddit thread dropped a massive list that's just too big to include in this post, but you can find it here.

I hope this list covers what you were looking for!

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 12.31

406 – Vandals, Alans and Suebians cross the Rhine, beginning an invasion of Gaul. 535 – Byzantine general Belisarius completes the conquest of Sicily, defeating the Gothic garrison of Palermo (Panormos), and ending his consulship for the year. 870 – Battle of Englefield: The Vikings clash with ealdorman Æthelwulf of Berkshire. The invaders are driven back to Reading (East Anglia); many Danes are killed. 1105 – Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV is forced to abdicate in favor of his son, Henry V, in Ingelheim. 1225 – The Lý dynasty of Vietnam ends after 216 years by the enthronement of the boy emperor Trần Thái Tông, husband of the last Lý monarch, Lý Chiêu Hoàng, starting the Trần dynasty. 1229 – James I the Conqueror, King of Aragon, enters Medina Mayurqa (now known as Palma, Spain), thus consummating the Christian reconquest of the island of Majorca. 1501 – The First Battle of Cannanore commences, seeing the first use of the naval line of battle. 1600 – The British East India Company is chartered. 1660 – James II of England is named Duke of Normandy by Louis XIV of France. 1670 – The expedition of John Narborough leaves Corral Bay, having surveyed the coast and lost four hostages to the Spanish. 1687 – The first Huguenots set sail from France to the Cape of Good Hope. 1757 – Empress Elizabeth I of Russia issues her ukase incorporating Königsberg into Russia. 1759 – Arthur Guinness signs a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum and starts brewing Guinness. 1775 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of Quebec: British forces repulse an attack by Continental Army General Richard Montgomery. 1790 – Efimeris, the oldest Greek newspaper of which issues have survived till today, is published for the first time. 1796 – The incorporation of Baltimore as a city. 1831 – Gramercy Park is deeded to New York City. 1853 – A dinner party is held inside a life-size model of an iguanodon created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and Sir Richard Owen in south London, England. 1857 – Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa, then a small logging town, as the capital of the Province of Canada. 1862 – American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln signs an act that admits West Virginia to the Union, thus dividing Virginia in two. 1862 – American Civil War: The Battle of Stones River begins near Murfreesboro, Tennessee. 1878 – Karl Benz, working in Mannheim, Germany, files for a patent on his first reliable two-stroke gas engine. He was granted the patent in 1879. 1879 – Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the public for the first time, in Menlo Park, New Jersey. 1906 – Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar signs the Persian Constitution of 1906. 1907 – The first New Year's Eve celebration is held in Times Square (then known as Longacre Square) in Manhattan. 1942 – USS Essex, first aircraft carrier of a 24-ship class, is commissioned. 1944 – World War II: Operation Nordwind, the last major Wehrmacht offensive on the Western Front, begins. 1946 – President Harry S. Truman officially proclaims the end of hostilities in World War II. 1951 – Cold War: The Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than US$13.3 billion in foreign aid to rebuild Western Europe. 1955 – General Motors becomes the first U.S. corporation to make over US$1 billion in a year. 1956 – The Romanian Television network begins its first broadcast in Bucharest. 1961 – RTÉ, Ireland's state broadcaster, launches its first national television service. 1963 – The Central African Federation officially collapses, subsequently becoming Zambia, Malawi and Rhodesia. 1965 – Jean-Bédel Bokassa, leader of the Central African Republic army, and his military officers begin a coup d'état against the government of President David Dacko. 1968 – The first flight of the Tupolev Tu-144, the first civilian supersonic transport in the world. 1981 – A coup d'état in Ghana removes President Hilla Limann's PNP government and replaces it with the Provisional National Defence Council led by Flight lieutenant Jerry Rawlings. 1983 – The AT&T Bell System is broken up by the United States Government. 1983 – Benjamin Ward is appointed New York City Police Department's first ever African American police commissioner. 1983 – In Nigeria, a coup d'état led by Major General Muhammadu Buhari ends the Second Nigerian Republic. 1991 – All official Soviet Union institutions have ceased operations by this date, five days after the Soviet Union is officially dissolved. 1992 – Czechoslovakia is peacefully dissolved in what is dubbed by media as the Velvet Divorce, resulting in the creation of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. 1994 – This date is skipped altogether in Kiribati as the Phoenix Islands and Line Islands change time zones from UTC−11:00 to UTC+13:00 and UTC−10:00 to UTC+14:00, respectively. 1994 – The First Chechen War: The Russian Ground Forces begin a New Year's storming of Grozny. 1998 – The European Exchange Rate Mechanism freezes the values of the legacy currencies in the Eurozone, and establishes the value of the euro currency. 1999 – The first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, resigns from office, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President and successor. 1999 – The U.S. government hands control of the Panama Canal (as well all the adjacent land to the canal known as the Panama Canal Zone) to Panama. This act complied with the signing of the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties. 1999 – Indian Airlines Flight 814 hijacking ends after seven days with the release of 190 survivors at Kandahar Airport, Afghanistan. 2000 – The last day of the 20th Century and 2nd Millennium. 2004 – The official opening of Taipei 101, the tallest skyscraper at that time in the world, standing at a height of 509 metres (1,670 ft). 2009 – Both a blue moon and a lunar eclipse occur. 2010 – Tornadoes touch down in midwestern and southern United States, including Washington County, Arkansas; Greater St. Louis, Sunset Hills, Missouri, Illinois, and Oklahoma, with a few tornadoes in the early hours. A total of 36 tornadoes touched down, resulting in the deaths of nine people and $113 million in damages. 2011 – Samoa and Tokelau skip the day of December 30, 2011 as they jump to the other side of the International Date Line, changing their time zones. 2011 – NASA succeeds in putting the first of two Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory satellites in orbit around the Moon. 2014 – A New Year's Eve celebration stampede in Shanghai kills at least 36 people and injures 49 others. 2015 – A fire breaks out at the Downtown Address Hotel in Downtown Dubai, United Arab Emirates, located near the Burj Khalifa, two hours before the fireworks display is due to commence. Sixteen injuries were reported; one had a heart attack, another suffered a major injury, and fourteen others with minor injuries. 2018 – Thirty-nine people are killed after a ten-story building collapses in the industrial city of Magnitogorsk, Russia. 2019 – The World Health Organization is informed of cases of pneumonia with an unknown cause, detected in Wuhan. This later turned out to be COVID-19, the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[thesteadydietofeverything]

Video Game Year in Review: The Top 10

As with any year-end list, this one probably isn’t complete. Last year, I fell in love with Nioh over winter break after I had already made my top 10, and just a few days ago, I started playing Hollow Knight. As I made clear in my previous lists, Metroidvanias can be hit or miss for me. I can get fed up with wandering around without a clear destination, and Hollow Knight has a bit of that so far, but it also has one of the most atmospherically welcoming settings for a video game in recent memory, and so far I’ve been pretty damn enraptured by it. I’m not too worried about it making the list at this point; it didn’t even technically come out this year anyway, but its Switch release earlier this year gave it somewhat of a second debut, for all the earned attention it finally got. At least I got a little shout-out here before publishing.

Anyway, here’s ten games I loved the shit out of in 2018. This was one year with a handful of games that I absolutely adored, none of which necessarily immediately jumped out to me as hands down the best one of the bunch, and honestly, that’s the way I’d prefer it, but it did make ranking them a bit tough. Really, from number five onward, the ranking gets pretty interchangeable. I didn’t plan on the game in my number one spot being the one that it is until I actually wrote out my feelings for it and decided that out of all them it was the easiest for me to just gush about. Alright, no further ado:

10. Donut County - Overall, it’s probably a good thing that Donut County isn’t longer than it is, but for as mechanically simple as sucking objects into an ever-expanding void is, it’s something that I felt I would’ve been perfectly entertained doing for a lot longer than the game lasted. Donut County has a wildly inspired and novel central gameplay hook, a relatably goofy sense of humor that might border on obnoxious if it weren’t so sincerely delivered, and an anti-gentrification, anti-capitalist message that mostly works without beating you over the head too hard with it. Ben Esposito and his team have created one of the most charming and original games I’ve played in years here.

9. Paratopic - “Cinematic” is a grossly overused and frequently inappropriate word to use in games criticism, but this game often had me coming back to the word, observing how many ways it feels like it authentically takes inspiration from creative methods seen more often in film, particularly art films, than in games, much more so than say, Red Dead Redemption 2, which typically embarrassingly pales in comparison to any movies it’s obviously aping from. There’s its willingness to not explain to you what’s going on, letting you pick up on clues from scenery and incidental dialogue. Its multiple switching perspectives, laced together to draw meaningful narrative connections. Its tendency to sit in the atmosphere of a scene. Its ability to tell a succinct story intended to be experienced in one sitting. And most of all, those jump cuts. I know Paratopic isn’t the first game to employ this technique, but as far as I can remember, it’s the first that I’ve played to utilize them for purposeful artistic effect, and every time it happened, it was oddly thrilling. I loved when I’d switch from walking to suddenly driving, and had a moment of panic, as if I suddenly just woke up at the wheel. The cliffhangers scenes would occasionally end on made me desperate to get back to that thread. Hell, even just the fact that there clearly were scenes, that lasted a few minutes at a time, then moved on to the next one, felt weirdly refreshing at a time when AAA design is becoming so absurdly bloated. Paratopic excited me, not in its desire to emulate a separate art medium, but in its casual realization of how many underutilized narrative techniques work genuinely effectively in this medium.

8. Dusk - I really can’t imagine a game that more perfectly matches my Platonic ideal of “video game comfort food” than Dusk, aside from, maybe, the game in the number one spot of this list. I was raised on 90’s PC FPS games like Doom and, as is much more relevant to this game, Quake. Yeah, for the most part, it’s nice that games have moved on, both in depth of gameplay and artistry, but goddamn does a back-to-basics twitchy shooter with inspired level design and creepy atmosphere just feel good sometimes. The grainy, chunky polygons of this game encapsulate everything I love about the rudimentary but remarkably evocative minimalism of early 3D graphics. The movement feels absurdly fast by modern standards, and the effect is thrilling - every projectile is dodgeable, as long as your reflexes are sharp enough. Undoubtedly the most impressive thing about this game is its ambitious level design, so much of which rivals even John Romero’s. The longer this game goes on, the more sprawling and labyrinthine it becomes. The map shapes become increasingly wacky. The gothic architecture becomes more foreboding and awe-inspiring. Dusk does a lot with a little, and in the process, makes so much more than a tribute to game design and aesthetics of the past - for me, it stands right alongside its obvious inspirations as one of the very best of its ilk.

7. Into the Breach - An absolute masterclass of game design. Into the Breach leaves nothing about its mechanics obscured, making sure you understand how every move is going to go down just as well as it does, and the fact that the result is still compellingly challenging is a sure sign we’re in the hands of remarkably skilled and intelligent developers. The narrative in this game is sparse - you assume the role of time-looping soldiers attempting over and over again to save your world from alien invasion (think Edge of Tomorrow), and that’s pretty much all you get for the plot, aside from some effective but minimal character beats and dialogue one-liners. And yet, every battlefield, a small grid with its own arrangement of sprites (giant creepy-crawlies, various creative mech classes, structures full of terrified denizens given a modicum of hope at the arrival of their ragged potential saviors) offers a playground for drama to unfold, as gripping and epic as any great mecha anime battle. As I mentioned in my previous list with Dead Cells, I have trouble sticking with run-based games, and this game wasn’t quite an exception - honestly, if it had something resembling a more traditional narrative campaign, I could see it potentially filling my number one spot. But that a game of its style nevertheless stuck with me as well as it did proves what a tremendous achievement I found it to be.

6. Astro Bot Rescue Mission - This was both the first game I’ve played fully in VR and the first game I’ve ever platinumed. I guess that might say something about how thoroughly I fell for it. For some reason, one of the questions that my brain kept posing while playing this game is, “would you like this game as much if it weren’t in VR?” I would like to pose that first off, if this wasn’t a VR game, it would be quite a different game, but yes, probably a perfectly delightful 3D platformer in its own right. But most of all, this game helped me realize what a bullshit question that is in the first place. By virtue of its VR nature, this game is just fundamentally different, just as the jump from 2D to 3D resulted in games that were just fundamentally different. The perspective you’re given watching over your little robot playable character allows to look in 360 degrees, and often you need to, if you’re seeking out every level’s secrets, and yet, while it moves forward, it doesn’t follow you vertically, so sometimes you’re looking up or down as well. It’s difficult to describe exactly how this perspective is so much more than a gimmick or something, outside of the cliched exaggeration of “it feels like you’re really there, man,” but honestly, this statement isn’t wrong. I truly did feel immersed in these levels in a way that I wouldn’t have if this weren’t a VR game, and while it’s not exactly a feeling I now desire from every game, it does stand out as one of the singular gaming experiences I had in 2018 as a result.

5. Thonebreaker: The Witcher Tales - I gushed plenty about this game in my review. How its approach to Gwent-based combat is both welcoming to newcomers and remarkably varied, offering new ways to approach and think about the game with nearly every encounter. How its sizable story is filled with fascinating characters and genuinely distressing choices, forcing you to grapple with the inherent injustices of your position. How its vivid art style and wonderfully moody Marcin Przybyłowicz score sell The Witcher feel of this game, despite how differently it plays from the mainline entries of the game. And maybe most of all, how criminally overlooked this game has been. So I’ll make the same claim I did before - if The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt did something for you, it’s likely this game will too. Don’t worry about the card game - I did too, and trust me, it’s fun. It’s the new Witcher game; that really ought to be all you need to know.

4. Yakuza 6: The Song of Life - There’s...a lot about the Yakuza games that I’ve come to adore, but one of the biggest ones that kept sticking out to me while playing The Song of Life is how they build a sense of place. After playing Yakuza 0, set in 1988, and Yakuza Kiwami, set in 2005, I played this one, set in 2016. Each time, same Kiryu, but older, same Kamurocho, but era appropriate. Setting every Yakuza game in the same map has to be one of the quietly boldest experiments in video games, forgoing fresh new vistas to explore in favor of the same familiar boulevards, alleys, and parks of the iconic red-light district, painting an exquisitely detailed and loving portrait of a neighborhood changing with the decades. While Kiryu’s exasperation at once again walking into the all-too-familiar crowded streets of Kamurocho, brighter and louder than ever, hardly matched my eagerness to see how it had changed, it felt appropriate. Though he’s still the hottest dad (grandpa?) in town, he is kinda old now, and he’s certainly earned the right to just be over it a little. Even the silliest of the era-relevant sub stories (one of which delightfully features Kiryu putting a selfie-stick wielding, obnoxious-stunt pulling, wanna-be influencer shithead in his place) serve to underscore how out of place he now is in his old stomping grounds.

By contrast, the other setting of Yakuza 6, the quaint seaside town of Onomichi, very quickly begins to feel like an idyllic retirement destination. The introduction to this part of the game has to be my favorite video game moment of 2018 - Kiryu trying to calm a hungry baby, while walking the deserted streets after dark in search of one store that still happens to be open. The faint sound of ocean in the distance effectively evokes the freshness, the bitterness, of the air. The emptiness and darkness of the space is almost shocking, compared to the sensory overload of Kamurocho. And there’s Haruto. Kiryu took Haruka in when she was 9, so he’s never had to deal with a baby before. He’s out of his element, but hardly unwilling. The help he gets from Kiyomi and his other new friends is the kind of comfort Kiryu needs at this point in his life. Likewise, the events in Onomichi play out like a retirement fantasy - building an amateur baseball team out of local talent, building relationships with the denizens of a bar in an incredible Japanese version of Cheers, hanging out with the town’s Yakuza, who are so small potatoes they seem to barely fit the definitions of organized or crime. It all works beautifully as a touching send-off to my favorite video game character.

3. Tetris Effect - There was a long time where I was contemplating putting this as my number one game. I went through some strange conflicts in the consideration - next to all these original, thoughtful games, am I really going to say that fucking Tetris is best one of them? Is that even fair? Is this game really anything more than just regular-ass Tetris but with some pretty lights and sounds and a 90’s rave kinda vibe? The answer to all of these, is, of course, yes, but also no. I’d defend my choice any day, though. This is the first game to actually get me into Tetris. I always appreciated it; it’s a classic, but it was never a game I had actually put much time or thought into before. This game not only sold me on Tetris, but got me obsessed with it, to the point where the name feels remarkably appropriate: ever since I began playing, I’ve been seeing tetriminos falling - in my sleep, in daydreams, any time I see any type of blocky shape in real life I’m fitting them together in my mind. The idea that all Tetris pieces, despite their differences, need each other and complement each other and can all fit together in perfect harmony, and that this is a metaphor for humanity, has to be some of the cheesiest bullshit I’ve ever heard, and yet, the game fully sold me on it from the first damn level. It’s all connected. We’re all together in this life. Don’t you forget it.

2. Celeste - This is a damn near perfect game, both as refreshing and demanding as a climb up a beautiful but treacherous mountain ought to be. I died many, many times (2424, to be exact), but the game explicitly encouraged me to be proud of that, acting as a friendly little cheerleader in between deaths, assuring me that I could do it. It’s both a welcome break from the smug, sneering attitude so many “difficult” games tend to traffic in, and absolutely central to its themes involving mental health. As the shockingly good plot starts making it increasingly clear that it’s about Madeline’s quest to conquer (or, at least, understand) her inner demons, the gameplay itself offers a simple but effective metaphor for struggling with mental illness - yes, it’s hard, and yes, you’re going to suffer and struggle, but you can make it, and you will make it, because you’re so much better than you think you are. Oh, and also, it’s not all bad, because at least you get to listen to some absolutely rippin’ tunes while you do it.

1. Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom - (Another one I reviewed!) This is my ideal JRPG. In my mind it stands next to childhood treasures like Final Fantasy IX. Unlike some recent Square projects that specifically try to clone their late 90’s output, this game hardly feels beholden to the game design of the past, and yet, feels of a piece with that era in a respectably non-cloying way. It has a bright, colorful, inviting world full of charming characters, an all-time great soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi, and an exciting, deep combat system with an emphasis on action. Building my kingdom of Evermore was remarkably satisfying, down to all the little dumb tasks my citizens would ask of me, none of which my very good boy King Evan was too busy or too proud to refuse. There’s very little grinding. It’s a long game by most standards, but at 40-something hours, it feels lean by JRPG standards. And for as much of a storybook fantasy as the plot is, as much as it reduces woefully complicated socio-political issues into neat, resolvable tasks for Evan to solve, it always came across as perfectly genuine, and sometimes surprisingly affecting. It’s the game that I’ve wanted to play since the PS1 Final Fantasy games stole my heart as a kid. That’s hardly what I expected it to be as I started into it, and what a joy it was to discover that it was.

[impossible-ancient]

~Us Brothers~

I wanted a Family portrait that was formal, and...well...here we are.  Originally, it was supposed to be inside of a Church and with Faith, but both didn’t work out.  This was a LONG process: This is a combination of 11...ELEVEN...pictures, all in a few dozen layers in Photoshop.  I was afraid it would look too 3-Dimensional and that Jacob looked weird.  But, I think it’s pretty good.  Half of the shadows are made by myself and it’s pretty easy actually.  Everything in the picture is from the game.  Also, Jacob’s hands where kind of awkward, so I added a little something. ;-)

HAPPY FRIDAY Y’ALL!!! :-)

[woundedheartwithin]

Studying Hope County

Jacob Seed (4 / ?)

Find my screenshots here!

Feel free to share and save, guys! Just please reblog if you do!

[safewithinedensgate]

escaping Jacob’s bunker with Deputy Staci Pratt

[radiojamming]

Driving north on 35, heading into the night The sun's getting easier for me to look at I've been singing these songs about you, Montana For so long without ever even knowing it

Montana - Rocky Votolato

Hope County Gothic - Week 2: Montana at Night

PLAYLIST || MOODBOARD PERMALINK

It’s one of those nights where the sky seems to put its hand on Hope County, stilling it to silence like it was little more than an unruly child. The wind is low and whisper-quiet, steadily trickling down the ridges of the Whitetails in misted cascades. Even the woods, usually raucous with sound of animals and the oppressive chatter of gunfire, have a creaking sort of softness to them now. The wind stirs the trees and their boughs groan like rocking chairs on front porches. There’s a hiss through the last few leaves, and it sounds for all the world like a secret being passed from tree to tree. 

There are punctures in the fabric of nightfall, of course. Starlight, shivering in the cold heavens, blinking down with emotionless eyes like indifferent angels. The slow, rhythmic pulse of the red lights on top of the banded communication towers. The wax-gold sentinels of half a hundred porch lights, still burning on like little beacons even if some of their owners are long gone. Flickers of firelight in the woods, in rusted old silo rings, in circles of lake stone. On the roads, misted beams of headlights tilt back and forth with each precarious twist of asphalt and dirt. There are floodlights and pale vapor lamps with the moving lacework of insects fluttering beneath them.

To step back, though; to perhaps stand on top of one of the highest mountains is to see how empty the world is. These little lights, these quiet reminders of life are so small, so insignificant. 

There’s a strange, muted truce that comes with the darkness. Usually it’s a weaponized thing, used to conceal, to hide behind like another barrier. Tonight, however, there’s not so much as a crack of a gunshot, the howl of one of the religiously incensed, the wail of mourning. If there was, it would all be swallowed up in this great reminder that there is always something bigger, something far more unstoppable than a bullet.

[prophesyr]

WEEK ONE: CREATION, OCTOBER 2ND   /   from atlanta, georgia to hope county, montana—the noise we made was joyous. how we laughed and sang in an age of adversity. you should have felt his presence those nights, when we were still a simple project, searching for a place to rest at eden’s gate.           word count: 1,219           trigger warnings: please tell me if you find something.

          HIS HANDS ARE SOFT ;  despite his tireless work and efforts, you know they must always be. Just as those eyes are always kind, and his voice forever holds the marvel and awe of a child. You wonder how that could be, when it is that voice that teaches in such a furious passion, when his eyes have seen the most  t e r r i b l e  things mankind has to offer, and those two hands built all which you now behold.           So hard, you fight to keep the name from your mind—the Father. The kind of name given to the man overseeing a damned utopia. Your friends and neighbors warned you, didn’t they? They gave their opinions when you asked for their guidance.               ‘   You heard what happened in Waco, right? All those years ago?   ‘     You remember this one more clearly than the rest. It came in hushed tones, as though maybe the FBI were still listening for the mention of the last False Prophet. How comical would it have been, you thought to yourself as you aimlessly watched a drop of condensation slip down the side of your untouched glass, if the feds shut down that whole restaurant over one name.     ‘   Don’t get mixed up in that  m e s s . You wanna get to heaven, you just keep believing in Jesus. Call on Him.   ’           But Jesus stopped taking your calls a long time ago.           This man smiles like he’s sharing a secret. Perhaps he is, because you can feel the night lulling you into its own private existence. A NEW WORLD awaits you beyond the confines of what you know, and you can feel it in your lungs with the chill of the autumn air. Something brighter is coming. Sure, your fear is nearly unbearable, but does that not excite you? Do you not long to comprehend the meaning of your own being?           I can’t stay long, you mean to say, but in its stead, you whisper into your own free hand,     ‘   —What is this place?   ‘           The one he holds tightens against his grip. He can’t let go—not when you have so many questions left.     ‘   The same field you see every day,   ‘     he answers. You knew that. Of course you knew that, yet it feels like news somehow.     ‘   So often, people spend their lives seeing things for what they are and hating them, rather than LOVE them for the greatness which they were already meant.   ’           Such beautiful words must surely be meant for something more than a simple plot of land. A piece of you could argue that all night. Another wants nothing more than to see the world through his eyes, to know the things of which he is wholly  d o u b t l e s s . All too easily, you blink away your own apprehension. Now here, under the endless October skies, you find SPLENDOR in even the bugs swarming the dim vermillion glow of the overhanging lanterns.           Most churches avoid Halloween, from its practice to its name. Here, they embrace the traditions of Samhain. Here, they run freely. Those he has identified as his family, his children, they don masks of witches and devils alike. Some flitter around like fae, the wings of  a n g e l s  carrying them from place to place, their bare feet running stained against the grass. They are lovely and daunting, and he smiles upon them as if their halos are what ignite the eventide.           ‘   Amazing, isn’t it?   ’     The Father regards this place with such a sense of pride, not for himself but those around him.           ‘   Incredible.   ‘           Music wafts between his followers, drifting out to meet and embrace you. Keep your rifle by your side? The words are strange, but it’s the rhythm which moves them. This place is alive, and by no influence of any substance. It has its own HEARTBEAT, its own breath, and you still can’t place any moment where you felt such a vivacity.           A group rushes past in a wave of childlike laughter. You grant them a smile that nearly fades the instant you notice the man in the corner. He holds the stature of a redwood, arms folded defensively across his chest. His face is scarred, his eyes darkened by time and memory. For a moment, he’s horrifying, but you remember: it’s only Halloween.           So you offer a kind wave to what must be meant as the latest slasher. All you get in response is the roll of his eyes.           It’s enough to make you pause, and before long, you find yourself  a l o n e  in a sea of strangers. Their amusement bites at you in a repetitive taunt. It bares its teeth in a hundred sharp smiles. They’ll have bombs and they’ll have tanks, ‘cause they’ve got money in their banks—everyone knows the words to a song you’ve never heard. They offer you drinks and games and talk. They want to know you. They want to welcome you.           This is too much.           Just when it all becomes suffocating, he swoops in. Not the Father, not the man with war in his eyes, but a Dracula impersonator whose costume must cost more than your measly apartment. He introduces himself first, a brilliant  g r i n  to match those vibrant eyes.           Your nerves speak for you despite the uneasy laugh,     ‘   What are you supposed to be?   ‘          And he sort of bows as he asserts through a set of pearly white fangs,   ‘   I’m an ambulance chaser. CHEAP, I get it. But it’s better than—   ‘     he ends it with a vague gesture toward your clothes.          Applause explodes around you, and the band quiets under its thunder. The main tent swarms with masked faces, each cheering for what might happen next. Before them, the Father stands with his hands lifted to the heavens. From where he stands on the makeshift stage to the smaller tents spread far and wide, his children follow en suit.     ‘   Praise be!   ‘     one shouts, then five more, then twenty and so on until the crowd booms again with the same phrase. Never have you heard such a commotion, yet he silences them so easily with the stay of his hand.          ‘  Brothers and sisters… my children,   ’     he beckons them, and suddenly he seems decades older than his twenty-eight years, wiser.     ‘   We have traveled so  f a r . I’m sure your feet are tired and your hearts weary. I’m sure that some of you would rather stay behind tonight, and no one here can blame you. KNOW THIS—our work is far from over. Once we find our promised land, it will have only just begun. When we are free of society’s lies and schemes, we will carry our heads high and build a better tomorrow. One where every voice is heard, every flaw is beautiful, and no one is vilified for their differences.   ’          You find yourself standing just at the opening of the tent, filled with awe and a want for something greater than yourself. To your left, Dracula has removed his gloves, just for the sake of joining the praise with an approving clap. If he says anything, it falls behind the piercing gaze of the Father.           Nothing could be more important, for in this moment, he is speaking only for you.          ‘   To those of you visiting, those of you willing and ready to know how it feels to live beyond life, those of you who have never felt that sense of belonging: we love and accept you, exactly as you are. Each and every one of you is encouraged to join us as we meet at Eden’s Gate. Welcome to the Project.   ’

[batsday]

When you bring your goth crew for a day at the beach. We havent done this since 2018. We hope you can join us. Bats Day® Beach Trip July 23, 2022 12pm – 7pm Will Rogers State Beach Parking (Temescal Canyon Rd) 15700 Pacific Coast Hwy Pacific Palisades CA 90272 Just because we are spooky doesn’t mean we don’t go to the beach. Grab your SPF1000, your coffin board and lets head to the beach. This is not a Bats Day Event but just a meet up at the beach for attendees with the same interests to have fun at the beach. Everyone is responsible for themselves and all the beach rules. Bats Day is not responsible for anyone. If you are unfamiliar with the Beach Rules check them out here: http://beaches.lacounty.gov/la-county-beach-rules/ We will be meeting up between lifeguard tower 7 & 8. Please see the map. - We will have a Red EZ-Up Tent in the area with the Bats Day Logo. - Parking is $10 - $20 and is totally worth it. - Please bring snacks and food for yourself or to share. - There is a place to buy food if you need to. (Beach Side Café) - You can stay as long as you like, permitted the hours of the beach. - Please don’t leave a mess or trash. Lets leave the beach the way it was when we came. - Most of all lets have some spooky fun. - Remember: sometimes to have fun, you have to dress a little lame. -----Coming up------ Bats Day® SpookyTime™ October 1, 2022 at DCA Bats Day / Goth Day but in the Spooky Season. Buy your tixs or Reserve your Magic Key Spots asap. Bats Day in the Fun Park 23 May 7 2023 Goth Day: The Spooky Trip to the Disneyland Resort Ca. Bats Day / Goth Day The original #DisneyGoth Est.1999 LINKTR.EE/BATSDAY #batsday #gothday #beachgoth #goth #beach #spooky #thecure #robertsmith #gothsofdisneyland #summerween #gothic #batsdaybeachtrip #gothfashion #tikigoth https://www.instagram.com/p/CgCTNhrLjo-/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=